I never got a chance to post about one of our family outings this season -- the evening we spent at Minnesota Harvest with the Little Admiral and the Admiral Emeritus. When my father came out to visit us for an early Christmas celebration, I looked around for something new and different for us to do as a family. Our radio station, AM 1280 The Patriot, has added Minnesota Harvest as a new sponsor this year. The apple orchard stays open through winter and offers an all-you-can-eat buffet dinner and a 30-minute horsedrawn hayride for $20.

Despite the bitter cold, we all thought it sounded like a lot of fun and we trooped out to Jordan, in the rural area to the southwest of the metro area. The Minnesota Harvest turns out to put out a pretty nice, low-key dinner, sort of chuck-wagon cuisine. They had turkey and ham, potatoes, beans, ambrosia, plus some excellent apple-based pastries -- which I'm not suppposed to eat but I sampled anyway.

We had a nice time listening to Cactus Willy, which the orchard bills as a Willie Nelson-style country singer but struck us more as a Burl Ives folk singer, which definitely fit the season. He aimed mostly for the small children, who seemed to think that Willy was a close relation to Santa Claus, for good reason as you can see. He was delightful in his low-key way.

We went on the hayride after we ate, which took us to review a series of Christmas lights. I had originally thought that they would take us through some residential areas, but in Jordan that would be a neat trick. The orchard instead sets up their own light displays, which would have looked very sweet had there been some snow on the ground. The displays were a lot of fun, but with the bare trees, the effect was a bit eerie. The Little Admiral was completely fascinated by it, trying her best to wriggle out of her mother's grasp to lean out of the wagon and get closer.

After riding for a half-hour in the bitter cold, we went back into the restaurant and warmed up by the fire for a while and listened to Catcus Willy sing a little more. It took us quite a while to get feeling back in our extremities, as you can see here.

We all had some good, old-fashioned fun at the Minnesota Harvest, and we plan on adding the hayride to our holiday tradition!

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Tracked on February 14, 2005 11:03 AM